19:52 - SpawdophonikDoes anyone live in an American suburb, if so is it still like this:

19:33 - Marcel Hubregtsebtw if you want to hear some really off the wall covers when compared to the originals listen to this split [link]

19:32 - Marcel HubregtseYeah that's a great cover. Loved at first listen when I got hold of the vinyl version of One in Darkness, Two in Damnation, Three in Death, 2002 - 2007 compilation on their tour in 2013.

10:39 - Ace FrawleyShit, just read this on Twitter: Due to some recent activity that we as individuals have zero tolerance for, Danny Walker is no longer the drummer in Intronaut. What the hell happened?

01. Ghost Of The Sun02. Sleeper03. Criminals04. A Premonition05. Will I Arrive06. Burn The Remembrance07. Wealth08. One Year From Now09. Walking By A Wire10. Complicity11. Evidence12. Omerta13. Inside The City Of Glass

Katatonia's third album Discouraged Ones was a brave turning point for the band. It distanced the band from the black metal tag that shackled them, and allowed some more subtle influences to creep into the mix. Both 2000's Tonight's Decision and 2001's Last Fair Deal Gone Down seemed to build upon their strengths as musicians and the fine art of crafting songs, and clearly showed the bands growing skills in both atmospherics and the ability to project the depths of human despair without losing hope.
Both Jonas Renkse [vocals, guitars and programming] and Anders Nystrom [guitars, keyboards and programming] spent the early part of last year with their other project Bloodbath [Resurrection Through Carnage] before reconvening in their hometown of Stockholm with fellow Katatonia members Fred Norrman [guitars], Mattias Norrman [bass] and Daniel Liljekvist [drums and percussion] to begin work on the Sweden's sixth studio album.

Katatonia themselves claimed that Viva Emptiness would take on a harder edge than their previous few efforts, and opener ?Ghost Of The Sun? proves that they weren's leading fans astray with false hope. The guitars are certainly a dominant feature, while Renkse's melodies and vocals are as tortured and mesmerising as they ever were. The back up screaming through the chorus and the female chant around the halfway mark are both stunning effects. ?Sleeper?, ?Will I Arrive? and ?Wealth? are all surprisingly heavy solid upbeat guitar driven numbers, and provide an ingredient that has been missing on the last couple of releases. But for all the number of tracks that show the band is still capable of creating heavy music, there's the trademark depressing anthems of emotional suffering. The best examples are clearly audible through ?A Premonition? and ?One Year From Now?. The percussive brilliance featured on ?Burn The Remembrance? is impressive, while the acoustic tinged aggression of ?Omerta? was not what I was expecting from them. The Nick Drake/Jeff Buckley influences are still imbedded within Renkse's songs, but perhaps not as obvious as previous releases.

Viva Emptiness is one of Katatonia's strongest releases to date. The combination of the album title, songs, atmosphere and cover [from the legendary Travis Smith] makes this the perfect Katatonia release.

I think their worst is Tonight's Decision the vocals were horrible and the music was very boring , but the latest two were pretty solid especially The Great Cold Distance

Holy shit someone thinks like I do!
Well.. I haven't heard their latest yet so I can't talk about that one but I find Tonight's Decision to be very boring with just a few tracks that are worth it to call the album "good" but it's a very "meh" kind of good if you know what I mean. And yes... I find "The Great Cold Distance" to be better than TD
And I ALSO agree with what you wrote about the vocals. I absolutely LOVE Discouraged Ones, it's in my top 3 easily from their discography and I think the vocals were perfect there... So I don't understand why I think the vocals sucked in TD (although I do think they were good again in LFDGD.

I totaly understand wht you're talking about , it is "good" just because it is Katatonia I think a sort of fanboysim from our side
LFDGD has some of Katatonia's greatest songs but also has some strange not-so-good moments. and the thing that makes me say that Viva is their best work from the new era is that it had much of the old elements "in terms of song writing" plus the new elements making it a masterpiece.

@J.O.O.E : Agreed and Agreed

----
He who is not bold enough
to be stared at from across the abyss
is not bold enough
to stare into it himself.

Yeah I've listened to Tonight's Decision and Last Fair deal a lot over the years and I've never really been all that into them, they are quite clumsy in terms of songwriting and the Renkse's vocals are seriously undeveloped. Though I didn't like the last two albums very much for a long time I've learned to see that they're actually pretty good records and it may or may not be the result of studio tweaking and polish but the vocals are much improved.

Ok, Katatonia is responsible for writing "We Must Bury You," an obvious misstep in composing and an unfair test and failure of Jonas' vocal range. Other than that, Katatonia are without question among the premier songwriters in hard rock/metal. These guys find more talent and soul under their couches than 10 Children of Bodoms combined.

Ok, Katatonia is responsible for writing "We Must Bury You," an obvious misstep in composing and an unfair test and failure of Jonas' vocal range. Other than that, Katatonia are without question among the premier songwriters in hard rock/metal. These guys find more talent and soul under their couches than 10 Children of Bodoms combined.

Ok, Katatonia is responsible for writing "We Must Bury You," an obvious misstep in composing and an unfair test and failure of Jonas' vocal range. Other than that, Katatonia are without question among the premier songwriters in hard rock/metal. These guys find more talent and soul under their couches than 10 Children of Bodoms combined.

...That's not the most pertinent of examples though is it really?

That was in fact the most pertinent example. You challenged both vocals and songwriting, and I searched my itunes (where i have every track they have ever released), and found exactly one example that supported your claim.

That was in fact the most pertinent example. You challenged both vocals and songwriting, and I searched my itunes (where i have every track they have ever released), and found exactly one example that supported your claim.

Regardless, CoB is an extremely random choice as they're nothing like Katatonia, even if you were just exercising hyperbole. I love Katatonia but I don't agree they're premier songwriters, almost all of their albums are prone to a number of weak filler tracks, they're far from infallible. I've learned to appreciate their past couple of records but that's mostly as an appreciation of their sound and improved vocal tone and performance, rather than songwriting.